A few weeks ago a headline got my attention: “Millie Sampson Makes It Two Wins from Two Starts.” Say again? Millie Sampson was the New Zealand runner who back in 1964, very early days for women's marathon running, set the women's world record (3:19:33). She's still around Auckland, and I've written about her, always enjoying her lively company. But Millie turned 80 this year. And the headline was on the racing page. Harness Racing NZ solved the mystery. Millie Sampson is a 3-year-old filly named after the runner, and “won the Lincoln Farms maiden, pacing the 2200 mobile in a blistering 2:42.6, with a flat tyre.” A worthy namesake.

So, as something lighter for the Christmas season, to end a year that has sometimes been fraught, and always intense, for our sport of running, I playfully started to explore the internet for runners whose names have gone out into the world beyond running. Then I had the inspired idea of sending Christmas greetings to some wise men, a selection of my most learned international running friends, to ask if they knew of things in their own countries – horses, streets, parks – named after famous runners. Not things within the sport, I said, not apparel lines, or races (the Zatopek 10,000m in Melbourne, the Gary Bjorklund Half-Marathon, Grete's Great Gallop), not track meets (Prefontaine Classic, Harry Jerome, Ivo van Damme) not tracks, stadia and running trails (Lovelock Track, Stade Alain Mimoun, Pre's Trail), but things outside running's own culture. For runners to be honored in that way might show what kind of impact our sport has on society at large. How are we valued? Do our heroes cut it in the wider world?

I had opened up a treasure house. Has no one thought of this before? In the festive spirit, here are some celebrations of great runners that I collected, to put under your tree. They are mainly from the English-speaking world, but there are dozens of Stades Alain Mimoun around France, and I haven't started on Scandinavia, Africa, or Asia. Other information and suggestions are welcome, in the “Comments” column. (From outside running itself, please. And not statues, postage stamps, or teeshirts, which are whole subjects to themselves.)

OK, the quiz.

1. Which famous runners have a racehorse named after them?

Racehorse: Millie Sampson, and several decades ago, Brasher, a steeplechaser in Britain named after Chris Brasher, 3000m steeplechase gold medalist in the 1956 Olympics.

2. Identify a mountain, a rock, and a rock band named after runners.

Mount Terry Fox is in the Canadian Rockies, named after the young man who lost one leg to cancer, and inspired the nation by his attempt to run across Canada for cancer research.

Pre's Rock is at the spot near Eugene where Steve Prefontaine died in a car crash in 1975.

Rosa Mota was a 1990s London rock band. Was one of the band a marathon fan? Or did they simpy like the sound of the name of the Portuguese 1988 Olympic champion? Describing one of her races, I once wrote simply, “Rosa motored.”

3. And a cookie, a doll, a pub, a post office, and an asteroid.

Ron Clarke cookies were a non-chloresterol health cookie produced in Australia, named for the 1960s multiple record breaker, who often confesses to being addicted to sweet foods as well as world records.

The Flo Jo fashion doll, wearing flashy purple one-leg tights, was produced in 1989, after Florence Griffiths Joyner became famous for her outfits as Olympic 100/200m gold medalist.

The Lovelock Sports Bar is in Wellington, New Zealand, named for the light-stepping winner of the 1936 Olympic 1500m in a world record. The oldest pub named for a runner is The Only Running Footman in Mayfair, London, where the gentry's running messengers used to gather in the early 1700s.

The Jesse C. Owens Post Office is on Woodland Avenue, Cleveland, OH, one of many memorials to the great 1930s sprinter worldwide.

And not just worldwide. Asteroid 6758 Jesseowens was discovered and named in 1980. Beat that, Usain.

4. Which runners have had songs written for them?

The first commercial song for a runner (leaving out ancient Greek odes) was Dorando, in which a stage-Italian barber laments that he gambled his whole business on Dorando Pietri's indoor marathon against Tom Longboat at Madison Square Garden in December 1908. “Dorando, he's a-drop! Goodbye, poor old barber's shop!” The composer was a young immigrant musician from Russia who soon after took the name Irving Berlin.

A reggae song was written to celebrate Jamaican sprinter Don Quarrie, by Joe Gibbs, performed by The Guerillas. And Rod Stewart wrote and sang “Never give up on a dream” for Terry Fox.

5. Which runners have had their face on banknotes or coins?Paavo Nurmi is on a Finnish banknote, and Terry Fox on a Canadian dollar coin.

6. Which runners have become proverbial in their home countries?

Sayings: In Greece, you still hear parents say “Egine Louis!” (“Go like Louis!”) to encourage children, and the phrase has wider meaning as “take off” or “succeed,” as Spiridon Louis did, in winning the first Olympic marathon in 1896. The Greek economy sure needs to go like Louis. In Jamaica, Don Quarrie is still in common conversational use as the paragon of speed (“I run for the bus like Don Quarrie, man!”). It will be interesting to see if Usain Bolt displaces him. It took decades for small boys in England to shout something at runners other than “Up two-three-four, come on, Roger Bannister!” In parts of Kenya, “Run like Tegla!” is a common encouragement, especially among women, after Tegla Loroupe, who won the New York City Marathon in 1994 and 1995.

In matters like naming, there's the official and the unofficial. I'll offer a sampling of both.

High Schools are perhaps the blue-ribbon evidence of official endorsement. 1960s sprinter Wilma Rudolph and Jesse Owens have schools named after them in Germany, there's a Don Quarrie High School in Kingston, Jamaica, and a Bill Crothers Secondary School in Markham, Ontario – though Crothers doubly qualifies, as chair of the York Region School Board as well as Olympic 800m silver medalist in 1984.

Paula Radcliffe has her own bridge, in her home town of Bedford, England; Aussie miler Merv Lincoln goes one better with a causeway, linking Victoria with New South Wales, from Wodonga to Albury; Eric Liddell of Chariots of Fire fame, Olympic 400m gold medalist in 1924, has a community center in Edinburgh; Wilma Rudolph has a residence center at Tennessee State University; Roger Bannister recently acquired a lecture theater in St Mary's Hospital, where he was a medical student at the time of the first four-minute mile in 1954; and Steve Prefontaine has a gallery within the Coos Bay, Oregon, Art Museum.

Jim Thorpe, the 1912 Olympic decathlon champion and sprinter, has a whole town named for him in Pennsylvania, a complicated story that is currently a matter of some dispute.

Tom Longboat, to break my own rule about keeping outside our sport, has a highly active club named after him in Toronto, the Longboat Roadrunners. And there's a Lydiard Athletic Club, not in New Zealand, but Johannesburg, South Africa, promoting the great coach's methods.

Streets, like stamps, make almost too big a subject for this preliminary global jog. But here goes. Additions welcome. Don't beat on me about omissions. This is just to get the discussion going.

In Canada, Longboat Avenue in Toronto (for the 1907 Boston winner and later professional marathon star), and Terry Fox Way in Vancouver.

In New Zealand, John Walker Drive in Auckland. (Another John Walker Drive, in Scotland, is I suspect named after the Scotch whisky, not the Kiwi miler.) The Christchurch suburb of Dallington, sadly damaged in the 2011 earthquake, has a whole cluster of athlete streets, all near Porritt Park: Halberg Street, Landy Street, Lovelock Street, Porritt Place, Snell Place. How Aussie John Landy snuck in there is a bit of a mystery. Maybe some city councillor thought he was a Kiwi. Or confused him with Arthur Lydiard. Or perhaps it was the usual generous sporting harmony between the two countries.

And in Kuopio, Finland, there's a street named after Hannes Kolehmainen, Olympic 5000/10,000m/cross-country champion, 1912.

But let's end with the informal. I have over the years named cats as Bannister, Yifter, Ngugi and Pawla. When I told Sir Roger Bannister that I had named my cat after him, he seemed much less impressed than I thought he should be. In the 1980s a Kiwi woman marathoner had a pet sheep named Grete, after her heroine Grete Waitz, and I still wear the hat she knitted from Grete's wool. The original Grete was much amused. Another friend had a tortoise called Bikila. But he was a 1960s British Olympic marathon runner who hoped the name-magic might slow Abebe Bikila down. Oh, and in rural New Paltz, New York, our graceful resident does are Lornah and Linet (Kiplagat and Masai) and the speedy chipmunk who races with such zest across the drive is Usain.

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